


the trick to finding zebras is that they want to be found

by youmockussir



Series: Quarantine Fics [1]
Category: Orbiting Human Circus of the Air (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Jacques is a jacquesass, Julian is a bro, Leticia just wants to see her girlfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23222200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youmockussir/pseuds/youmockussir
Summary: Leticia is in a bad mood, and The Janitor knows exactly how to fix it.
Relationships: Julian the Janitor & Leticia Saltier, Leticia Saltier/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Quarantine Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669657
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	the trick to finding zebras is that they want to be found

Leticia and Julian have a mutually fearful relationship. 

Julian is terrified of Leticia because she is physically the strongest person he knows, and he always wonders if one day she’ll lose her temper and throw him off the edge of the Eiffel Tower. Sometimes, he thinks about her just tossing him like a paper airplane across the balcony. He thinks it would be fun, for a while. He would drift over Paris, seeing the lights of all the buildings below, before finding his way onto the cobbled streets. Or, more likely, it wouldn’t be very fun at all. 

But she is unpredictable, and large, and muscular, and strong-willed, and Julian finds himself shrinking away when she’s in sight. He doesn’t like things that he doesn’t know, and he never knows what Leticia is going to do.

Leticia is afraid of what Julian can do, but in a different way. For someone who is so small, so skinny, he can wiggle his way into the ballroom even if there were armed guards at every door. He’s like sand. He gets everywhere and is a pain in the ass to remove. Leticia keeps pulling him out like weeds but he just keeps coming back, again and again. Sometimes, when she finds gray hairs in her dark brown bob, she will name them after him, because she knows he is the cause.

Tonight, she doesn’t have the energy to deal with a rogue janitor. Her week has already been terrible enough. John Cameron has been in a particularly foul mood (she suspects, in part or in full, due to the situation with Archie), and he has been an absolute mess to clean up after. She is the chef stagehand, not a janitor! And here she is, trying to keep him in a presentable state, hiding his brandy and getting those weird stains off his face.

What really toppled her mood, though, was not the unruly janitor or the drunken, out-of-control diva. It was Delphine. The only certain thing in her disaster life, the woman she woke up next to every morning and who she could come home to every night. The woman who could always make her feel better, and who cried on her shoulder when things weren’t right. She saw Delphine every day, and had for almost eight years, and her radiance never grew dimmer in Leticia’s eyes.

On show nights, Delphine comes to watch from the audience. There is something about knowing that her partner is watching makes Leticia so much more proud of the work she does. Knowing that someone she loves so dearly is so close, watching something she put so much effort into.

Not tonight. 

There has been a break-out at the zoo where Delphine worked. Three zebras had _somehow_ escaped their enclosures to run into the Paresian night, and the entire zoo staff was on lookout duty, sweeping the radial streets. Delphine, as the head zookeeper, could not rest until the rogue animals were found.

Leticia was proud of Delphine. She was very good at her job, and everyone who met her knew this immediately. Still, she feels a certain emptiness as she looks out from between the curtains tonight, knowing Delphine wasn’t there. 

In Leticia’s opinion, this is certainly a good enough reason for her foul mood. 

Jacques doesn’t think so.

“What’s up your ass?” Jaques asks as he rolled the feature presentation into its pre-show location. 

“Oh? You know what iz up my ass, Jacques? Your sheet, all of it,”

“My sheet?”

“Yes, your sheet.”

“Like, my bedsheets?”

“No! Sheet. Sheet. Sheeeet.” Leticia clears her throat. “Shiiiit.”

“Oh,” Jaques pauses. “Wait, why is my shit up your ass? How did it get-”

“That’s eenough, you big oaf!” Leticia snaps, dropping a large crate onto Jacque’s feet.

After the appropriate amount of cursing and very masculine squealing, Jaques whines, “That was absolutely not necessary.”

“Ten minutes til we’re on the air!” says Margot, running through the backstage area with a large framed photo of John Cameron riding a horse.

Just then, someone runs headfirst into Leticia. She’s about to start yelling her head off, when she is interrupted.

“Leticia!” wheezes the Janitor. “I have something for you! Well, someone. Well, not _for_ you but, um, is here to see the show? I mean--”

“Julian.” Leticia grits through her teeth, but then she sees who is right behind the janitor.

“Delphine?” Despite herself, Leticia breaks into a wide smile. “You caught ze zebras? How?”

Her lover smiles, softly. “I didn’t,” she nods at the Janitor. “He did.”

“You _what?”_

“The trick to finding zebras is that they want to be found,” Julian looks at his feet. “You just have to listen for their dancing. They like an audience to watch them perform.”

“Five minutes!” cries Margot, now running across the stage in the other direction, this time dragging behind her an enormous painting of John Cameron riding.. two horses?

“Sheet,” says Leticia. She starts to run off, but then remembers herself.

“I’ll see you later,” she says to Delphine, who smiles sweetly. They lock eyes, for a moment, before Delphine blows her a kiss and walks back into the audience. 

Leticia’s heart softens, and she feels the wrinkles on her forehead smooth out. _God, she loves that woman._

“And you,” she says, facing the Janitor, who flinches. Noticing his reaction, she takes the moment to smile, just a little, almost imperceptibly. “Thank you.” 

Julian blinks.

Leticia hesitates, but leans in slightly before giving him a soft kiss on the cheek. Then, turning on her heel, she belts some orders at Pierre about birdcages and tightropes.

Julian’s hand ghosts over where she kissed him. He smiles, and then climbs up into the air ducts. Maybe Leticia isn’t so scary after all.

Somewhere, back home where they belong, two zebras dance quietly. They know that they helped someone tonight. They helped two people. And, they met a very kind man who wanted to watch them dance. A good night, for the zebras.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally part of a longer fic that was along the lines of "5 times the janitor got kissed by a crewmember" but we don't really know enough about a lot of the stagehands to make that happen. Maybe I'll publish the Jacques and John Cameron bits later


End file.
